It was a lovely early spring day today, light North Easterlies, no commitments, so I got life jackets and oars and Oz and I set off pushing Barca's new cart for its first trip down to the beach. The cart has some issues, and it was a real work out getting down there, but once there we set off on a circumnavigation of Wise's Reef.
It was a rising tide, about 2 hours before a not particularly high tide (0.7 m). There was not much wind, and it was possible to get reasonable idea of what was underneath the surface of the water. There is a gap in the reef, and I rowed Barca backwards carefully through there. We didn't hit anything.
Once through, we pretty soon ran aground on what seems to be a sort of clay bank that runs along behind the reef. The tide was running with us noticeably, flooding in through the gap. I tried pulling us along a bit, but the novelty wore off that pretty quickly. So we just sat, and let the rising tide pick us up and carry us along to the next bit, bump, stop, wait, repeat. According the Charles Stock, this sort of progress is the origin of the expression "Touch and go". Could be. Whatever, it was extraordinarily pleasant way to spend a morning.
Eventually. we got really stuck, with no prospect of moving for a while, not too far from the beach, so I pushed us ashore so Oz could have some shore leave.
He seemed pretty pleased about that arrangement. I towed the boat along the beach for a bit on a long line, nicer to be walking on the sand than in the mud a bit further out, which has a nasty black underlayer, perhaps left over from an oil spill sometime in the past. Closer to the jetty near the Seaholme Beer Drinkers/Boat owners club (as far as I know, none of them own a boat ) the water gets a bit deeper, and we could set off again to complete our circumnavigation.
The eponymous Mr Wise was still around till recent times, though I have not seen him in the last year or so. It is not often you meet someone with a geographical feature named after them, though I am not sure how official the name is. But everyone here knows it as "Wise's Reef".
It was an easy row back, round the outside of the reef, much easier than the course through the shallows. I loaded up the cart ok, though it seemed even harder to push. Crossing the Esplanade, we had to hurry as a car was approaching fast. I hit the gutter, and Barca slid off the cart with an impressive crunch. To make it all more interesting, as I was getting organized, being distracted, I must have put my hand on a bee or wasp, as I got stung on the left hand. I was about express my feeling with a few choice anglo saxon natuical terms, when two nice older ladies came rushing up to help. Definitely no cursing. One held Ozzie, the other lifted up the boat while I realigned trailer, and tied on the extra line that I should have tied on in the first place. It was really nice of them to help, it restores my faith in the general goodness of my fellow humans.
The other piece of news is that my article on building the scamp has been published by Practical Boat Owner. It doesn't look too bad, and who knows, it might actually encourage someone to build a SCAMP, which would be something.
Dinghy Cruising NZ put a link to the article:
https://www.facebook.com/
And last of all, Peter Murphy alerted me to a cameo appearance by me in another video. Well there you go. An odd bit of editing, but there you go, there I am, about 0.28
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